A Cultural Interpretation Of Family Themes In Breathing Lessons

As one of the spokeswomen for family novel of the 20 th century in America,Anne Tyler captures a subtle yet distinct highland to reexamine the contemporary American society.Breathing Lessons has earned widespread recognition from the academic circle owing to its fantastic storytelling and vivid characterization.It tells the story of a couple's long journey in a single day,but is fed up with characters' retrospects and reconsideration for the past.It surely inherits Tyler's general writing style,which presents lively characters.Most scholars have such comments on Tyler already.However,the studies of Tyler's works seem always lack of some extrinsic investigation.This thesis therefore endeavors to broaden the connotation of Tyler's works by a cultural interpretation of her family themes,which helps people to attach more attention to her distinctive humanistic concerns.Based on the theory of cultural interpretation and originated from the perspective of family themes,this thesis attempts to analyze Tyler's Breathing Lessons from three aspects of family themes,namely marriage,parenting and gender relationship.When depicting marriages,Tyler thoroughly reflects how the diverse individualism comes to affect people's marriages.Sometimes it helps a marriage to prolong its duration,yet occasionally it may lead one to an unhappy ending.It is closely related with the revolution of American society.Since the 20 th century has been an eventful age for American development,varieties of gaps began to develop among different generations.Through the glimpse of parenting in Tyler's writing,this potential social problem can be more perceived.The unique identities of the Silent Generation and the X Generation are bound to cause the problem that they will express rather different views about life and trigger intense conflicts.As to gender issue,Tyler presents peoplea special landscape of gender relationship by her insightful depiction of characters,which meanwhile reflects a latest development of gender balance in American society.In Breathing Lessons,by scheming so many accidental yet inevitable events,Tyler directed a spectacular scene play where the American middle class come to redeem their life step by step.Tyler not only tells interesting stories,but provides people with great enlightenment.Those cultural imprints deep rooted in her family themes will definitely help people to learn more about the society.